Match Of The Past: Wolverhampton Wanderers

It’s time for our final Match Of The Past from the Championship, and this evening we feature Wolverhampton Wanderers, and six matches from the years between 1969 and 1988. We kick off with a trip to White Hart Lane to play Tottenham Hotspur, and this is the first of three matches from three consecutive seasons from the early 1970s. The following season sees Wolves at home against Everton on a snow covered Molineux pitch on Boxing Day 1970, and our third match sees them at home in November 1971 against the team that would end the 1971/72 season as the surprise champions of England, Derby County.

We then skip forward to the end of the decade for a Second Division match against Bolton Wanderers from May 1977. Having already secured promotion back to the First Division, Wolves travelled to Burnden Park to deny a Bolton side that was itself pushing for a return to the top flight. This was the start of a yo-yo period for the club, and our penultimate match sees Wolves travel to The Hawthorns in November 1983 for a derby match against West Bromwich Albion, having been promoted to the First Division the previous summer but failing to win a single match up to that point that season. Finally, we skip to 1987/88 and the Sherpa Vans Trophy final against Burnley. The club had endured crisis after crisis throughout the middle of the decade, but they had finished that season as the champions of Division Four and this match was played at Wembley against another Division Four club in front of an astonishing crowd of over 80,000 people.